A mourning dove flutters about a bur oak forty paces to our left. He lifts the gun and sights.
“Don’t shoot the bird!” I cry.
“Don’t shoot the bird?” he repeats in disbelief, lowering the gun.
Somewhere in the distance, Andy fires Cay’s gun, scaring off the dove. West drops his head back and closes his eyes.
“I’m sorry. I favor doves,” I babble, wincing at how girly that sounds.
He shakes his head. “Sammy.” Then he gives me the gun and pushes my hands toward a tree.
“What?”
“You favor trees?” he mocks.
I suck up my stammering and summon my gruffest voice. “Which leaf?”
“Start with that knot.” He points to a depression, wide as my hand, in the same bur oak.
The first shot goes wide and the second goes wider in the other direction. But now I have a feel for the iron, and by the third shot, I hit the knot right in the middle. Shots four and five follow right on its heels.
As long as I don’t have to kill anything with a pulse, my hand is steady.
West squints at the tree and then at me.
I blow out the smoke that rises from the barrel. “What do you know? It works.”
? ? ?
Second night of cowboy training: riding.
Through a grove of sugar maples, Peety shows us how to turn on a half-dime, and how to handle a horse that bucks.
“Pull head up and move forward. It also helping if you give her compliment before you get on. Tell her she got nice smile, something like that.”
“You’s kidding me?” says Andy. She draws her arms across her chest, then thinks better of it and drops them to her sides.
“Trust him, no horse ever threw Peety,” says Cay.
My mule loves to gambol even after a day of travel and an evening of riding exercises. After I tie her to a pink dogwood, she pulls the whole tree out of the ground chasing a butterfly.
While I spend my time trying to keep Paloma out of trouble, Andy works on overcoming her nerves with Princesa.
“Come on, ya horse, giddap already, can’t you feel me kicking?” pleads Andy, giving Princesa another tap with her heels. Princesa drifts to one side, chewing the bluegrass near where Paloma and I are practicing our turns.
Peety wags his finger. “No begging. Order her to giddap.”
“I am ordering her,” says Andy.
“You are conquistador marching into battle, is that how you command your troops? Horse needs strong leader to feel safe.” He bats his hand at Andy and says in a girlish voice, “Please, if you do not mind me asking, let us go now.”
Andy’s mouth falls open.
“I am just a little girl, so scared of my pony,” continues Peety in his high voice, pinching the sides of his imaginary skirt and tippy-toeing around. Princesa throws back her head and screams, a scream that sounds uncannily like a shriek of laughter.
That does it. Eyes bulging, Andy pulls back her shoulders. “I said, giddap!” She stabs in her heels.
Princesa cocks an ear. A moment later, she gits.
Peety drops his act and nods once. “Exactamente.”
After more drilling, Andy and I walk our mounts to cool them down. Peety strolls beside us. “Princesa came to rancho one day after her owner no want her. Says too much horse for him, too wild. But he’s wrong. She’s not wild, she’s spirited. ‘Wild’ means ‘I no care about what I do.’ But ‘spirited’ means, ‘I love what I do.’ Big difference.”
? ? ?
Third night of cowboy training: roping.
We settle at the top of a grassy embankment, with basswood trees to our backs, and the trail below us. A ring of wagons lies on the other side of the trail, their oxen mowing down the scenery all around them.
Andy and I hunker side by side on the grass and watch Cay jump rope in front of us. Peety and West sit five paces away, playing poker and half watching Cay. West fans his cards with one hand, then refolds them by knocking them against his knee.
Cay stops jumping and ties a lariat. “Ropes come in all sizes but cowboy lengths are twenty or thirty feet.” The lariat makes a musical whipping sound as it spins.
Cay handles his rope as skillfully as if it were a lady, spinning it with either hand, even crawling through it without letting it touch the ground. After he finishes playing to the gallery, he shows Andy and me how to make six kinds of knots, including a sweetheart knot, which is strong enough to connect two ropes together as if they were one.
“When do you use that?” I ask.
“When you need an extra length, like when you need to catch a wild horse. Or a sparrow.” He wiggles his eyebrows.
Finally, he demonstrates how to make a honda by tying an eye splice. Weaving the thin strands of hemp soothes my mind.
“C’mon, Sam, let’s throw already.” Andy nudges me with the toe of her boot to hurry me up.
“Almost done.” I keep my eye on my rope so I don’t mix up the strands. This reminds me of how I used to braid my hair. If we had not cut it, I could have spliced my hair around my head as practice.
I get to my feet and dangle my eye splice in front of Cay.
“Not bad. Now, kids, hold the coils in your left, twisting half a turn for each coil so things don’t get kinky. Lariat in your right.”